John Growdon is Professor of Neurology at the Harvard Medical School and attending neurologist at the Massachusetts General Hospital. He graduated from Northwestern University in 1960 with a BA in English Literature and obtained the MD degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1965. His post-graduate training was in Internal Medicine at the University of Chicago Hospitals (1965-69), in Neurology at the Massachusetts General Hospital (1971-74) and in Neurochemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1975-1977). Since 1982, he has directed the Memory and Movement Disorders Units at the Massachusetts General Hospital, which provide diagnostic services and continuing care for individuals with Parkinson disease and related movement disorders, and for individuals with cognitive impairments and dementia, including Alzheimer disease.

Dr. Growdon founded the Massachusetts Alzheimer's Disease Research Center funded by the National Institute on Aging and currently serves as the Director of the Memory Disorders Unit, which is the clinical arm of the Center. He is also Director of the Movement Disorders Unit, which is the clinical unit for the MGH Udall Center of Excellence for Parkinson Disease Research funded by the National Institute for Neurologic Diseases and Stroke. His research interests center on the clinical neurology and neuropharmacology of Alzheimer and Parkinson diseases, along with efforts to uncover biologic markers of these disease that could lead to improved diagnostic accuracy and treatment.